


Of Interpretations and Transformations

by Des98



Series: Into the Silence Verse [3]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, Zuko is an Awkward Turtleduck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:02:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25174330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Des98/pseuds/Des98
Summary: Zuko adjusts to being firelord while trying to figure out his own unique ruling style.  His friends are there to help him every step of the way.  Sometimes, they manage to have fun even with difficult situations.
Relationships: Mai/Ty Lee (Avatar), Mai/Zuko (Avatar), Sokka/Suki (Avatar), Ty Lee/being a big lesbian with all her new coworkers, Zuko/being a little shit, Zuko/being an awkward turtleduck
Series: Into the Silence Verse [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1820716
Comments: 8
Kudos: 267





	Of Interpretations and Transformations

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Silence](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24841747) by [Electrons](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Electrons/pseuds/Electrons). 



Being the Fire Lord was exhausting and often thankless work, Zuko had to admit. But there were also bright spots, especially with his family there with him (part of Zuko was almost thankful he’d lost his voice, because it gave at least one of his friends an excuse to stay with him at all times when otherwise, they might have been forced to leave by their own separate duties even though they didn’t want to). 

Honestly, Zuko wasn’t sure why Ozai had ever ruled through fear and aggression when responding to difficult nobles and ministers by being a passive-aggressive Entity of Chaos was just as effective, and with much more hilarious results. The Minister of Etiquette (and seriously, why was that even a thing?!), upon witnessing Toph’s table manners, questioned her right to be in the palace, and since Toph didn’t want to go back to her parents anyway, Zuko went ahead and officially adopted her into the royal family, and made her third in line to the throne (behind Uncle but ahead of Azula) to boot. When the Minister of Etiquette questioned _that_ decision, Zuko fired him, since he wasn’t doing anything useful anyway. Then he replaced him with one of his favorite turtle-ducks. The Minister of Etiquette was now a purely ornamental position occupied by Minister Fluffybeak, who was paid in bread crumbs and was quite happy with his newly elevated station in life.

Minister Ryu had been disgruntled when Zuko repealed the Sozin-era law against same-sex relationships, so Zuko created a whole parade to celebrate them. He also told the Kyoshi warriors that those among them who were dating were more than welcome to be openly or even excessively affectionate on the job, especially in front of anyone who might disapprove. Ty Lee took this as an invitation to kiss all of her new teammates (with their consent, of course), as well as Zuko’s own girlfriend. Which was fine with Zuko; he didn’t mind sharing, and he wasn’t going to make Mai choose between him and Ty Lee when she was clearly in love with both of them.

When Minister Shu had rudely stated that he didn’t understand the need for Sokka, a ‘water tribe peasant’ to participate in a fire nation budget meeting, Zuko had said, through Sokka, that since Minister Shu was apparently proficient enough in sign language to question the presence of Zuko’s interpreter, Sokka would no longer translate any inquiries directed solely at Minister Shu. Thus, when Zuko asked Minister Shu a question, Minister Shu had to nod along even though he had no idea what the fire lord had asked him. That is how Minister Shu agreed to give 95% of his net worth in a donation towards war reparations for the Southern Water Tribe.

Zuko’s policy was to take his job seriously, love and respect his people, and treat everyone as his equals. However, not everyone was willing to employ those policies in return, particularly those who had profited from the war or who had revelled in Ozai’s policies instead of just following them for the sake of survival. It was with these people that Zuko dealt with in such creative manners, utilizing a unique blend of non-violent solutions and the tendencies of any teenage boy, including those with absolute power, to be little shitheads.

A month after they won the war, and most of their squadrons were heeding Zuko’s orders to withdraw peacefully. Working closely with the earth kingdom, very few of the retreating armies were attacked by Earth Kingdom soldiers and thus required to defend themselves. All in all, it was going about as well as one could possibly hope for.

Well, almost. There was _one_ hold-out. It was the same general who had wanted to send the 41st to their deaths, and he was refusing to withdraw his soldiers. First he claimed that he never got the missives ordering withdrawal, or that he thought the orders were fake, or that he hadn’t heard that the war was over, etc. When he finally _did_ cede to the orders to retreat, there were several skirmishes, and he claimed that the earth kingdom soldiers attacked him first, which everyone knew was not true. It became a frustrating exchange of letters, and Zuko was getting sick of it. He growled, useless vocal chords straining against his skin as he burned yet another waste-of-paper, full-of-yakbullshit letter from the general.

“Woah buddy, easy there,” Sokka held up his hands placatingly as the ash from the letter fluttered to the desk in front of them. He and Zuko were in Zuko’s new office (he had let Toph bring down the entire wing of the palace where Ozai used to live and build her _own_ new royal quarters on top of them. Toph liked this very much, and, after creating a wing for herself that was a marvel of earth-and-metal architecture worthy of the greatest earthbender in the world, went down to the prisons to taunt Ozai about the fact that not only was a blind earthbender the new princess of the fire nation; she was also sleeping on top of the ruins of his old home). It was a rare day where there were no meetings scheduled, only catching up on paperwork, so Zuko was wearing a simple, unadorned red silk kimono, sandstone-colored pants, and his now shoulder-length hair was up in a lazy half-bun instead of a royal topknot. 

No member of the palace staff would have let the fire lord leave his chambers dressed that way, but, unlike most royalty in the past, Zuko preferred to dress himself, so they merely fretted in the corners and wrung their hands as Zuko flitted gracefully through the palace, barefoot, in his casual wear.

The relaxed look was offset by the deep scowl he was now wearing as Sokka asked him what was wrong.

“That shrewroach bastard keeps starting shit!” Zuko signed in a flurry of anger, his hands as vulgar as his mouth had once been while living on a navy ship. “He won’t withdraw, and he keeps trying to weasel his way out of his orders by talking around them, or trying to find loopholes, or just flat-out ignoring me! I’m going out there!”

Sokka raised a brow. “I don’t think Katara would like that; you’re still technically on light duty. And Uncle would have a conniption if he knew that you were going to face _that_ general without him.” Somewhere along the line, the group had stopped calling Iroh ‘Zuko’s Uncle’ and just slipped into calling him ‘Uncle.’

“I’m going either way,” Zuko asserted. “Unless you’re going to physically restrain me?” His smirk showed exactly what he thought Sokka’s odds of managing _that_ were, even with the fire lord still weakened from his lightning injury.

Sokka sighed; even if he wanted to actively restrain Zuko, which might cause the exact sort of physical harm he was trying to prevent, even a warrior as capable as he was had no real chance when the friend that he was trying to restrain was also a shape-shifting dragon.

“Fine, but I’m coming with you.” Zuko’s smirk turned into a genuine smile now that he’d won the argument.

“Thanks.” His hands started moving again. “He’s about a day's journey east by komodo-rhino, but I should be able to do it in a few hours roundtrip.” He leapt nimbly out the window leading to the courtyard, and Sokka had to scramble after him, decidedly less gracefully, to avoid being left behind. Why couldn’t the dramatic fucker just use a door like a _normal_ person.

 _Well, it’s not like he’s exactly a normal person by any stretch of the imagination,_ he amended with a roll of his eyes as he watched his friend disrobe down to his boxers. The long, loose underwear were not exactly standard fire nation underclothes, Zuko wasn’t going to rip all of his outfits every time he shifted, and that meant undressing down to his underthings out in the open sometimes. Sokka took Zuko’s clothing and shoved them into his ‘dragon bag’ which included an extra outfit and a sheet to change behind. Every other member of their hodge-podge little family also had one, because they knew Zuko very well, and thus they knew that there would surely be many, _many_ times where their local awkward firebender would ‘dragon first, think later,’ as Katara put it.

The boxers ripped away as Zuko’s body lengthened and got significantly harder and shinier, and also grew wings, horns, and a tail. Zuko attempted awkwardly to pick up the pieces of fabric with his mouth so that the servants wouldn’t have to, and Sokka just rolled his eyes again and did it for him, shoving them in the dragon bag as well. Then he scrambled up onto the place where Zuko’s back met his considerately-lowered neck, avoiding the still-tender looking star-shaped crater of scarred flesh in his armoured chest.

Zuko took off, and Sokka squealed.

“This is _kinda_ my first time riding a dragon, you know! Could you maybe chill out a little?” 

He felt Zuko’s rumbling laughter as it shook under him, and sighed deeply.

[]

General Slaughters-the-Innocents (he’d had a name, once, but other than to his face, none of the soldiers under his command had used it for the past three years) was trying to yell his reluctant men into attacking an earth kingdom village and naming it as a colony in the name of Fire Lord Ozai (seriously, his men thought, why would he still want to follow some loser who was sitting, powerless, in the dungeons beneath the palace?) when a distant flying object started getting remarkably closer at an alarming speed.

“I don’t think that’s a bird,” one of his soldiers said.

“Oh really, dumbass? I hadn’t figured that out by the way that it’s _shining in the sunlight!”_ Another snapped sarcastically, apparently forgetting that their commanding officer was listening.

“Is that… is that a fucking _dragon?!”_ It is important to note, here, that with Zuko having been busy recovering and then launching straight into a very occupied schedule as a brand-new firelord immediately post-war, there hadn’t been a lot of dragon-ing yet, and nobody outside of the palace staff really knew that their new firelord could moonlight as a very powerful, scaly, and supposedly-extinct flying reptile.

General Slaughters-the-Innocents watched as the dragon landed with a grace that should not be possible for such a large creature, his massive claws barely creating any vibrations in the ground. The dragon’s glare seemed displeased with him, and it was with growing horror that he realized that the dragon had the exact same scar over his eye as the new young fire lord- the same scar that his own actions had led to.

But that was impossible, surely… he was just being paranoid. He harrumphed and turned to the water tribe peasant boy getting off of the dragons back. Wait, wasn’t this the same water tribe peasant boy who fought with the avatar and the boy ‘fire lord’ against True Fire Lord Ozai? Where did he get a _dragon?_

The peasant boy slid off of the dragon, his icy eyes cold and hard. “We’re here to formally demand the withdrawal of your soldiers.”

The General snorted derisively. “Under what authority? All the new fire lord has done is send me angry letters devoid of any political finesse, and now he sends a mere peasant lackey to order me around? If he were half as great as he thinks he is, he would have come here himself.”

“Boy, are you gonna regret saying _that,”_ the peasant boy chuckled under his breath. The general had an army at his back, and he was not intimidated by one peasant boy’s threats, even if that peasant boy _did_ have a dragon. After all, while dangerous, a dragon was just a brutish beast with no real intelligence to speak of. It was why the Great Sozin had killed them all off.

For some reason, the peasant boy held up a sheet. Then there was a warping of the shadow of the dragon, and suddenly the shape behind the sheet was… a man? A very short man, but _definitely_ a man. And the peasant boy did not seem surprised by this. He merely handed the man clothing. 

The soldiers all waited with baited breath as the man stepped out from behind the sheet. And there, dressed in casual clothes like the sort that they themselves might wear on leave, was…

Fire Lord Zuko. Fire Lord Zuko could turn into a dragon. Fire Lord Zuko, a formidable firebender in his own right, could _also_ turn into a dragon. The ruler of their nation, the one whose orders he had been actively and flagrantly disobeying the past few weeks, the one who he’d indirectly gotten burned and banished three years ago, was _a fucking dragon!_

Agni, General-Slaughters-the-Innocents was _so_ screwed.

His soldiers watched eagerly. They _hated_ him. They had been actively resisting him at every turn, anything they could do without being outright flash-fried by the man or committing the murder of a superior officer. They were eager to watch their commanding officer get his ass handed to him by their dragon fire lord, so much so that the revelation that _their firelord was a fucking dragon, holy shit!_ had kind of taken a back seat for a moment.

The fire lord raised his hands. His hands made no fire. Instead of punishing the general with a blistering fire blast, however, he started making a series of odd, complicated-looking gestures. The soldiers looked at each other, confused. They’d heard vague whispers, rumors that the fire lord could no longer speak due to some sort of spiritual accident, but they had not been expecting this. _They had not been expecting_ _any of this._

“I’m here to interpret for Fire Lord Zuko,” Sokka began. “I will be repeating everything he says, exactly as he says it, in first person. You should look at him when he is speaking, because he is the one that is speaking to you. Now, let’s begin.”

“I thought I had made it _very_ clear,” Zuko began, through Sokka, “that you were to withdraw your troops, _general.”_ Sokka made sure to make the word ‘general’ sound derisive and insulting, since Zuko’s own face as he signed the word was a grimace of disgust. Although, he would have done it anyway. Sokka knew how Zuko felt about this guy, and it was a sentiment he echoed. The man was an antithesis of the honor that Zuko possessed in spades, and if this wasn’t Zuko’s battle to fight, Sokka would have already come down on him with a double helping of whoop-ass.

“Well, my lord…” the general began, now fully in grovelling mode.

“I do not want to hear it,” Zuko snapped, baring his teeth as Sokka repeated what he signed with a voice full of venom. “I gave you specific directions, and you flagrantly disobeyed them. Every action that you have taken is a slap in the face towards the peace we are trying to create, and in direct opposition with everything that the Fire Nation should stand for. But I will be merciful, this time. I think it fitting that you should be banished from the fire nation. If you are found in the earth kingdom and arrested there, you will face their justice. Likewise with the water tribes. If, however, you lead a quiet life somewhere remote and do not harm anyone further, there is a chance that you could turn your life around and live your last years in relative peace. I hope the experience humbles you.”

Sokka took a deep breath and let himself have a moment to congratulate himself for his rapidly-increasing fluency in sign. He’d been studying nearly non-stop since the end of the war whenever he wasn’t in peace meetings, and with Aang so busy in his capacity as the Avatar, and Katara keeping herself busy by healing wounded soldiers whenever she wasn’t busy healing Zuko, it had fallen largely to him and Suki to translate for Zuko. The servants had started picking up basic signs to communicate with a fire lord that it was clear they were quickly coming to adore, but the nobles and generals and ministers made it very evident that they did not want to do any such thing. So, he was getting pretty good.

The general wasted no time bowing and kow-towing to Zuko, now that it was clear that the new fire lord had power beyond what any of them, including Ozai, could ever hope to understand. He wasn’t _happy_ about his punishment, obviously, but he was escaping with his life and knew when to cut his losses.

The rest of the soldiers were genuflecting in front of Zuko, their faces lit in awe.

“You have clearly been blessed by Agni, my lord,” one of the braver ones said. “We are truly grateful to have you as our fire lord, and will accept any punishment you deem fit to give us.”

“I don’t want to punish you,” Sokka interpreted. “You were just following orders, and as I didn’t receive any reports of anyone _other_ than the general committing war crimes these past few weeks, I am going to let you off with a warning. Do not disappoint me.”

“Of course, fire lord!” the next-highest ranking officer, a sergeant, stepped forward. “I’m sergeant Lee, and I will lead these men straight home. Thank you, Fire Lord Zuko, for your benevolence and mercy.”

Now that Zuko had accomplished what he came here for, he was back to his usual awkward self. “It’s fine. Just please, stand up…” Sokka had to hide a laugh at how pleading his expression was as he translated the sentiment. Poor Zuko was so eager to get away from the awed looks in the eyes of his subjects that he forgot to even strip before transforming back into his dragon form, and Sokka barely managed to wait until they were airborne before he burst out laughing.

“Did you see their faces?” he wheezed, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes with the hand that wasn’t holding tightly to Zuko’s mane. “Man, I hope you weren’t too set on that whole ‘democracy’ idea, because I don’t think your people are ever gonna let you retire now that they’ve seen _that.”_

Flapping his wings, Zuko released a despondent huff that lit the sky with flames to match the setting sun. 

Sokka laughed again. Some days, it really was great being the fire lord’s interpreter.


End file.
